Stalker [English translation]

(after movie by A.Tarkovsky)

by Jacek Kaczmarski

transl. by Jadwiga Smulko and Ryszard P. Kostecki

Who of us has never travelled by a drowning wreck?

Who amongst us dares to contradict he is flawed?

Who of us has never been by a blinded bird misled?

Who has never been led into wasteland by a stray dog?

And yet, we are enthralled by the fenced area

And it is excluded for a purpose, we want to believe

It's not us within it – it's us without the Zone

It is for us to pace it, with our own gait, be it unfirm

Until all hope, defeated by bitterness, is out - gone.

Thus, in spite of wires, guards' posts and watchtowers

We long to go where going is forbidden

To possess useless, ridiculous mysteries

If only we could burn with passion fever once again

Before a sudden blast flicks off the back of the head

The way might be roundabout and misleading,

Our guide might be a swindler, who craves to make a dime,

But better this, than death on ramparts calcifying

At the invisible borders and trenches, where yawns

A soldier, whose resemblance to a convict is without denying

The path leads through the inundated glens of ages gone,

Under the shallow waters – illegible argot of times past

A trail over the rifles, the manuscripts and icons

Above which the paddle draws an Apocalyptic splash

The wail is not for us, nor the ancestors – but for sons.

Is then the truth for us to find – an empty room

With switched-off phones, that suddenly start to ring?

The dearest blood, that slowly flows in lifeless brook,

A forceless wrath against the Firmament, unheeding,

And the spell of words to protect from the hexes' hook?

Is then the truth for us to find – a table of stone,

From which the object of the prayers fell, untouched by hand?

In transport's wheels clatter – Beethoven's aria?

Bottomless abyss, and – above it, suspended –

Our own face, that watches itself in spaces

Of the drowning – whom fortune did not send a raft?

Of the flawed – whom it had ever failed to heal?

When the blinded bird has finally found the right track

And the stray dog has at last sat at the doorsill.